The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered British Petroleum today to find a less toxic dispersant to use on the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Within 24 hours, BP must identify a less toxic dispersant and to put it into use within 72 hours. EPA has not said that the dispersant BP is using is dangerous, only that the long-term effect of its use in such unprecedented amounts is unknown.

In the U.K., the Corexit line of dispersants had been banned more than a decade ago. BP has been using dispersants from the line of products named Corexit 9500 and Coexiit (R) EC9527, ProPublica reported earlier this week. Corexit dispersants were used after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. It was subsequently linked to respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders.

Corexit has kept the oil gushing from the underground well from reaching the surface of the Gulf of Mexico by breaking it into small droplets. For BP’s public relations, keeping the oil off the sugar sand beaches of Pensacola and out of the thicket of marsh grasses in the tidal flats of Louisiana is critical. But research vessels documented massive plumes of oil deep in the Gulf of Mexico, including one plume that is 10 miles long, three miles wide and 300 feet thick.

When EPA administrator Lisa Jackson appeared before a Senate panel on Tuesday she spoke as though the agency didn’t understand the reason for the U.K. ban. EPA is “still looking into why” Corexit was banned in the U.K., she told the Senate, according to Mother Jones. “I’m amazed by how little science there is on the issue,” Jackson said.

— Susan Eastman

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